The Inspired Island: My City(2015)

Io sono nata viaggiando(it)

A journey back through Dacia Maraini's and her trips around the world with her close friends cinema director Pier Paolo Pasolini and opera singer Maria Callas. An in-depth story of this fascinating woman's life. Maraini's memories come alive through personal photographs taken on the road as well as her own Super 8 films shot almost thirty years ago.

Im Märchenwald der Gebrüder Grimm(de)

Christopher Isherwood: A Born Foreigner(en)

Documentary about author Christopher Isherwood, in which he is interviewed about his life and work and which features extracts from films of his novels and stories.

England: Background of Literature(en)

Takes students to England to show them the land that inspired many great writers... the London of Chaucer, Dickens and Browning...the countryside which was so meaningful to Shakespeare, Keates, Wordsworth and Kipling...and the sea as Coleridge, Conrad and Masefield wrote of it.

Cartoneras(pt)

Cartoneras is a documentary that grapples with Latin America’s urban realities, and the cardboard publishing movement that has emerged from these in the 21st century. Reflecting on the different contexts that propelled this form of community publishing, like Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, the independent art scene, and the movements which formed around waste-pickers, the film’s narrative is developed through conversations with important actors from the cartonera world.

Hong Kong Fooey(en)

HongAFI nominated director, Charlie Hill-Smith’s first documentary, is a telling insight into the complexities that face modern China. In 1997 the most free market city of earth was consumed by the last great communist state, but who is China? What is China? Travel from Hong Kong to Beijing to Tibet to grab a warts and all snap shot of the Middle Kingdom as it rises to become the great power of the twenty first century.

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony(de)

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Kwai Shing West Estate(xx)

A homage to the social housing architecture that is so atypical of Hong Kong - especially the Kwai Shing West Estate. About half of the population lives in such building complexes, where one experiences a strong sense of loneliness. The neighborhoods are the scene of modern living conditions, but also of social protests, which have been punishable by life imprisonment in Hong Kong since 2020 due to a new law.

Fishball Revolution(en)

An asylum seeker from Hong Kong builds a new life for himself in Glasgow, using his passion for street food to maintain his cultural identity.

Yellowing(cn)

The turmoil that has overtaken Hong Kong since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 has spawned a new generation of young, passionately committed activist filmmakers; they want to tell Hong Kong's story with Hong Kong voices. And the best indie documentary to have emerged so far from the HKSAR is this year's Yellowing, by Chan Tze Woon, a 29-year-old with degrees in policy studies and film production. Hong Kong's fraught, tense relationship with its mainland Chinese overseers came to a head with the Umbrella Movement of 2014. A crowd of protesters stormed Civic Square on September 27. The next day police shocked most residents of the HKSAR by attacking the growing crowds with volleys of tear gas, whereupon a wide cross section of Hong Kongers occupied the streets in several areas and stayed for almost 6 weeks. Chan took his camera on the streets for 67 days during these events.

Gertrude Stein: When You See This, Remember Me(en)

The thoughts, words, and compelling presence of Gertrude Stein flows richly through this portrait of the author's Paris years from 1905 through the 1930s.

YAYA(en)

YAYA is a story about a filmmaker who explores the complex relationship between his family and the domestic worker who spent decades away from her family in the Philippines to raise his. This documentary is a tribute to all the domestic workers in Hong Kong, who has served as the backbone of Hong Kong's economy by unleashing a substantial female workforce into the economy and taken care of so many lives with love and care. You are all heroes in the hearts of the Hong Kong people. - Justin Cheung, the director

Fear(less) and Dear(cn)

Hongkongers have been experiencing extremely difficult times due to the political movement caused by anti-Extradition Bill since the summer of 2019 followed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This film explores Hongkongers’ fear in various dimensions, be it a concept or actual physical experience, personal or political, private or public, or the mixing of these pairs.

Hubert Krejčí – Smrt divadlu!(cs)

Lai Man-wai: Father of Hong Kong Cinema(cn)

In the life of Mr. Lai Man-wai, he had seen the most turbulent times of recent Chinese history. From the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the founding of the Republic, from the Sino-Japanese War to the founding of the People’s Republic. With a patriotic spirit, he joined the revolution and used the theatre to promote the revolutionary course. For a ‘stronger China’, and ‘education for all’, he chose film as his life long goal and career. Lai was more than the father of Hong Kong cinema was; he was also one of the pioneers of the Chinese cinema. He made Hong Kong’s first short fiction film ‘Zhuangzi Tests His Wife’. He opened the first Chinese owned cinema, the New World Cinema, in Hong Kong…. In the several decades, Lai had devoted his life and fortune in writing this glorious inaugural chapter in early Chinese film history. The technical enhancement, the introduction of foreign techniques and equipment were all part of his contribution to the Chinese cinema.

Dorian Gray: A Portrait of Oscar Wilde(fr)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, the seminal work of Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), continues to find new readers and inspire artists and creators around the world more than a century after its publication in 1891, because it was endowed with all the elements necessary to make it an undisputed heritage of world literature.

Sunday Beauty Queen(tl)

Beneath Hong Kong's glittering facade, Filipina domestic helpers work in relative anonymity and for near-slave wages. In a beauty pageant like no other, five helpers give themselves makeovers for a day and gleefully reclaim their dignity.

Road Not Taken(zh)

After the failed Umbrella Revolution in 2014, lives go back to normal, but the scenes of the great protest are like yesterday for Billy and Popsy, students in the University of Hong Kong who took part in the movement. One of them now becomes a student leader, while the other chooses a low-profile life as a private tutor. Amid the rapid social changes, when the Communist Beijing government is extending their influence to Hong Kong to take away the freedom and democracy, how would the youths see their future? Do they still see hopes, when both peaceful protests and radical actions seem to be futile?

Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?(en)

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower(en)

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.